Newly Formed Louisiana State University Water Polo Team Receives Local Press Notice

BATON ROUGE, La.
-- Tony Frey came to Louisiana State University confident
he would continue his high school pastime of water polo in college.
The only problem was that LSU didn't have a water polo club.

Frey, a business sophomore, decided
to start the club last year after being involved with the sport for
two years in high school.

The Houston native and his friends
began recruiting members to join the club through Facebook and
advertisements at the University Recreation Student Recreation
Complex. That was only the beginning of getting the ball rolling
for the club.

Frey said while the club has done
promotional events and fundraisers like Tiger Stadium cleanup and
selling concessions at baseball games, it's difficult for a new
club to get recognized by LSU and receive optimal practice times
and locations.

"It was easy to draw the people,"
said senior water polo player Anthony Cane, also a business major.
"The problem we had was getting a pool to play in. It took us about
a year to get permission to use [the Natatorium]."

Frey said one of the toughest
aspects of the sport for the team is dealing with the mix of
experience levels that come from a newly founded club.

"Some people come in not knowing
anything. Some people swam in high school, and some people played
all four years in high school," Frey said. "It's a good growing
experience for everybody."

In LSU's first-ever tournament this
weekend, the club came back from two goals down with less than
three minutes left to win an 9-8 overtime thriller against
Auburn.

Cane netted the goal that put LSU
ahead.

"It felt really good to know that
we could do that," Cane said. "The fact that we were down with not
a lot of time left but were able to come back showed a lot about
our team."

Frey noted the significance of the
win for the team, which only started practicing last semester.

"Seeing us compete and actually
beat a team at a tournament gave me reassurance that this team was
going to go places," he said. "I felt as though we're actually
becoming something legitimate."

However, the team's path to its
tournament and first win wasn't an easy one.

Before defeating Auburn in
overtime, LSU had lost its first game of the tournament in a tight
contest with Georgia. The team later fell to Central Florida in its
final game.

The experience was a positive one
for the team, though.

"A lot of people at the tournament
were pretty surprised," Cane said. "They have clubs that have been
around for 20 years or so, and we made a statement to them."

Cane added the team had to borrow
caps from another school at the tournament because they only had
enough money for one color of caps.

Cane said LSU is receiving
opportunities for future tournaments now that other schools know it
has a team. He wants to keep generating interest among the LSU
community, as well.

"I'm really hoping that people here
at LSU know we're around because there's 30,000 people that go
here," Frey said. "There's bound to be some people who have
experienced the sport before but don't yet know about the
club."

Cane and Frey agreed the team needs
to keep competing in tournaments to improve and, most importantly,
get more practice time.

"We want to get an additional day,"
Cane said. "Two days a week really isn't enough to stay
competitive."